Substantially all bottles and other containers, prior to their use, must undergo cleaning. Naturally, this would apply to previously used bottles prior to refilling. However, even new bottles typically must submit to a cleaning prior to their first use; this will serve to remove various types of unacceptable dirt such as dust, remnants of the raw materials forming the bottle, and the like.
Furthermore, the operator filling the bottles typically has them moving on a conveyor line. His preference would have cleaning equipment operating upon the bottles on the conveyor without the necessity of extending the length of or adding additional segments to the processing line. This would indicate the use of equipment that removes the bottles from the conveyor, appropriately cleans them, and replaces them upon the same conveyor ready for subsequent use.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,255,615 to E. M. Frankel shows an apparatus for pneumatically cleaning bottles. This equipment, however, requires several conveyors dedicated to its own use. The equipment takes the various bottles, rotates them through an arc of about 360 degrees, cleans them, and places them on a separate conveyor. It utilizes spring loaded guides in an attempt to keep the bottles moving into and out of the equipment. Different sized bottles, however, as well as bottles with shapes other than circular may clog the eqiupment either at its input or its output.
Joseph K. McBrady, in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,159,164, showed a device for cleaning containers that provided several significant improvements. First, the construction permitted its placement directly over an already existing conveyor line. There, it removed the bottles from the conveyor, rotated them about an arc of 360 degrees, cleaned them, and replaced them upon the same conveyor.
McBrady's apparatus accomplishes its task without creating a traffic jam at the equipment's entrance and exit. He does this by utilizing double-width equipment with two separate sections. Each section has the capability of carrying the bottles through an arc of rotation. The entering bottles travel 270 degrees in the first half of the eqiupment and undergo their cleaning there. The equipment then transfers them to the second orbit, which has the function merely of replacing them on the conveyor. By moving the bottles from the first orbit to the second orbit prior to their complete circle of travel, the equipment replaces them upon the conveyor without bringing them into conflict with the bottles entering the equipment from the upstream conveyor line. While McBrady's equipment necessitates the use of additional equipment for the second orbit, it did accomplish the purpose of removing containers off a conveyor and replacing upon the same conveyor without creating conflicts or jamming at the entrance and departure points of his equipment.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,516,108 to G. F. Loeffler shows a bottle cleaner that can remove containers from a conveyor and replace them upon that same line. It permits the external adjustment of the width of the path within the cleaning equipment itself to accommodate bottles of different size.
Loeffler's equipment removes the bottle upstream on the conveyor, rotates them through an arc of almost 360 degrees, and replaces them upon the same conveyor. In an effort to avoid creating a traffic jam at the junction at the equipment with the conveyor, Loeffler first offsets the exit opening slightly from that of the entrance opening in the direction from which the bottles travel as they pass through the arc. Secondly, Loeffler uses various stationary guides in an effort to direct the bottles off the cleaning equipment prior to their coming into conflict with the entering bottles. However, containers of different size or noncircular configuration may still create an unacceptable traffic jam at the equipment's entrance or exit.
Thus, various types of bottle cleaning equipment have found use in the past. Most of them will work for a particular size and configuration of bottle or container. McBrady's equipment works for a variety of bottles, but does require some additional construction. Accordingly, the search continues for an efficient versatile bottle cleaning equipment that will work on containers moving along a conveyor line.